Update: AOL just made a surprise move and acquired the Huffington Post for $315 Million. This is possibly the best thing that could have happened for the sinking web portal company. Now AOL will have exclusive advertising privileges to the millions of visitors to the Huffington post and the editorial smarts of one of the most popular news content providers online.
Google Spam Filters and Blekko Banning Content Farms
There has been an uprising in internet user complaints about too much spam showing up in Google search results. People are receiving junk content that does not have any value to them and they are not happy about it. This past week Google has announced a new spam filter to help bring more relevant results to users. Only time will tell if the new algorithm changes will work or how effective it will be.
Blekko, the SlashTag search engine has gone so far as to completely ban some content farms from its search results. What is a content farm? My definition is: A website that creates a lot of web data for the sole purpose of increased search standings with sacrifice of overall quality of content. Websites such as ehow (A major source of revenue for Demand Media) will no longer show up in Blekko.
Will Google make the same change in fear of people switching over to Blekko.com?
They have publicly stated that they are not going to block “content farms” and that overall results from those sites should remain unaffected. Most users of Google have no idea what Blekko is and a larger proportion have no idea how to use slashtags. As long as Google can correctly address recent issues with bad search results in organic search queries with their most recent change they should see little to no defection of users to Blekko.
Taking an overall look at the industry, what does this say to sites like Demand Media and AOL (The AOL Way). Specifically I will focus on AOL.
They have just initiated a new overarching strategic business model. Focusing on volume of content (5-10 articles produced per day, per employee) and the body of the content being focused on search ability/profitability. What is the problem here? This is exactly the type of content that Google is trying to circumvent and Blekko is starting to block. Content created to make money, not give value to users.
If there is a flood of mediocre content (Demand Media and AOL) that does not give sufficient value to Google search users, more and more people could begin to look at other search engines (Blekko) for certain types of search queries (Obviously this would not help in finding movie times or comparing prices for the cheapest blu ray player).
Update: With respect to the acquisition by AOL, it will be interesting to see how they choose to utilize The Huffington Post, its loyal audience, and the human capital gained.
Who knows, maybe I will start to post search results of Google and Blekko to compare the quality of content. All that I know for sure is that people want more quality results from their search provider.
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